Skeinforge UI suggestions

I rather enjoy building the easy-to-use user interfaces for another website of mine.  I’m always tweaking it and trying to make it better.  Small change, test, ask for input, LRR.1

My last post gave me a great idea.  A large physical console with actual knobs, switches, and dials that all operate Skeinforge.  If I had one of these, I would want it to look like the center console of a TARDIS.  Some of the best Doctor Who moments are when he’s zipping around the console, tapping, flipping, twisting, turning and generally being wacky.

Imagine being able to do that sort of thing and then have a plastic object (of a seemingly correspondingly random quality) pop out of the center?

  1. Lather, rinse, repeat. [↩]

Patience

As MakerBots and RepRaps proliferate, so do the websites and content concerning them.  Gian Pablo Villamil had a really great post about his adventures with Skeinforge.  As with BotHacker’s excellent post about the Skeinforge Cool setting and analysis about the benefits of cooling fans, Gian’s post takes us through each of his Skeinforge changes as well as documenting it’s effect on the print quality.

I wish I had more patience for that.  I tried for a while documenting each change…  but quickly became enamored with the idea of spinning dials and flipping switches in Skeinforge in the (sadly badly) mistaken belief I could make it better.

What’s so special about printed business cards?

If you’re thinking of the normal run-of-the-mill business cards and you’re thinking too flatland.

This is a 3D printed business card printed using two extruder heads, clear PLA, black ABS, and some special GCode to essentially laminate black text within layers of clear PLA.

I’m not even sure what I would build with this kind of tech.  Although, I think it would be super awesome to build models using clear PLA to create a variation on those “bubbles in crystal created by laser” thingies you see in gift shops everywhere.  Or, a white or black plastic dinosaur skeleton printed in a block of PLA “ice.”

How about a woolly mammoth?  Or caveman or alien or an entire 3D scene of spaceships attacking the deathstar suspended in clear PLA?

Got my groove back

It just wasn’t the same without my old theme.

Of the several WordPress websites I have, this was the first one I moved to WordPress 3.0 when it came out.  Unfortunately, 3.0 totally broke the hell out of my theme.  I suspect it happened when the database was upgraded and it nuked the theme options.  But, an upgrade to the theme1 and a little CSS spit and polish…  and I’m back!

Edit: One unfortunate side effect of upgrading the theme was that it nuked my logo image.  I found the original on Flickr, resized it, and dropped it back in.  However, as you can tell from the nasty pixelation – I used “Paint” to resize.  Blech.  I’m going to have to redo that.

  1. the super flexible and customizeable Constructor [↩]

Documenting Skeinforge settings

Uncool tower, cool tower
Uncool tower, cool tower

BotHacker recently documented his adventures in cooling fans and Skeinforge options – to amazing effect. 1  You should read the entire post, because there’s a lot of good info in there.  However, to summarize:

  1. Numerous permutations of cooling fan sizes and speeds offered some improvement.
  2. Using no cooling fans and putting the Skeinforge Cool setting at a minimum layer time of 10 seconds offered a dramatic improvement.

BotHacker’s post is what Skeinforge documentation should look like.

Update: Per BotHacker’s comment below, “Skeinforge must be told to ‘Slow Down’ for this to work. The other option is ‘Orbit’, and may lead to poorer results.”

  1. BotHacker – your photo to the right on Flickr says “all rights reserved” but I thought you might not mind me discussing your post and photos favorably.  If you don’t want me to link or post a copy of your photo, let me know and I’ll take it down. – MakerBlock [↩]

MakerBot Upgrades

I just noticed that two parts I designed (an X-axis tensioner and Y-axis tensioner) are suggested prints on the MakerBot wiki.  (Yes, I know it’s an open wiki – but I swear I didn’t add these things myself).  It’s pretty cool that generations of MakerBots may be using upgrades I designed.

Internet fame and fortune are mine!

Sketchup STL Importer Plugins

As I’ve mentioned before, I do all of my 3D modeling in Sketchup.  It’s not open source, but it is free.1

Well, I’ve been monitoring the Capolight Electronics Blog lately – and it’s a good thing too.  Besides having some seriously amazing information about the thermal properties of plastic, he’s just posted about some useful importing/exporting plugins for Sketchup.  As easy as Sketchup is to use, it’s just not very good at exporting to STL.  I haven’t tried these plugins out – but I’m hopeful they will do the job.

If you try them out, please let me know how it goes!

  1. I suppose it’s really a “freemium” business model… [↩]